Tips for Soundproofing Your Medical Office

Discover the soundproofing treatments designed to produce the privacy needed for a successful medical office setting. Preserve the confidentiality between doctor and patient, and protect the future growth of your medical practice using these simple steps!

For common wall sound bleed, the soundproofing treatment should target the collapse of the transmitting sound wave. The framing studs inside a standard wall will connect two adjoining rooms structurally. The frame becomes the equal to a string pulled tight between two coffee cans. Sound waves will bleed structurally through the common contact points inside your wall. The goal with protecting one room's noise from the next should target the disconnection of the wall, and then lining the assembly with additional weight. Density impedes resonance, much like grabbing a tuning fork by the prongs to force the collapse of the vibration, the sound dies with it. By adding weight to a wall surface, you trigger the same basic effect. The combination of adding density to your common wall, and disconnecting it to force the collapse of the wave, can produce up to 90% elimination of noise bleeding straight through the wall.

Disconnection is simple. Simply add a thin set of horizontal furring strips or resilient channels up the wall, and drywall over it. The density component is also simple, prior to adding your furring strips, anchor a thin layer of mass loaded vinyl to your wall to impede the vibration. This layering technique is time tested, has nothing to do with fiberglass batting stuffed between studs, which doesn't work anyways because it ignores the true path the noise is taking to slip to the next room over. The steps are easy. Start by stapling dB-Bloc to your finished wall, or exposed frame, then run the horizontal furring strips up the wall every 16" on center, and add a new layer of 5/8" drywall. You do not need pre-engineered drywall due to the density of the mass loaded vinyl.

The next step in the process is to attack leaking. The plenum space in most office complexes will carry common air space above all rooms in a medical office setting. The goal with soundproofing a medical office, once the walls are properly insulated for sound bleed, is to treat the ceiling system for leakage. Most commercial grade ceiling tiles do not carry the density they need to block sound. But there are weighted, finished ceiling tiles that you could drop into your grid, or weighted insulation plates called Ceiling Caps that you can rest atop your existing ceiling tiles. Regardless of your choice, adding density to a ceiling tile system will stress the grid, so be sure to triple up on the hangers used to support the grid.

The doors leading into each of the medical office settings are typically very weighted, dense doors, properly fitted around the perimeter for minimizing sound bleed. If your doors are light weight, consider replacing them.

One final point on surface mounted sound panels and wallcoverings. Sound panels absorb echoes within the room, they do not block sound from bleeding out of the room. Sound panel treatments target the elimination of echo inside the room, as opposed to a barrier treatment that targets the blockage of sound from room to room. Most sound panel treatments are designed to improve inner room acoustics, not isolate one room's noise from the next.

The important thing to note is that 90% of all soundproofing treatments are applied once the room's are finished and the acoustical problems are discovered. While the ideal is to target sound reduction out ahead of the build of your medical office, the reality is that there are acoustical products and treatment options available to you for finished, existing rooms. Your patients will appreciate the privacy, your bottom line will improve as your patient retention rates climb thanks to your soundproofing efforts.


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NetWell Noise Control authors one of the most expansive online websites
in the field of soundproofing, with a track record that dates back 20+
years. Hundreds of vertical market applications are pre-defined,
tailored to the specifics of any one soundproofing treatment. For
help with your room acoustics, contact NetWell at 1-800-638-9355.